


Formative Experience

by Tromperie



Category: From Beyond (1986)
Genre: Being Crawford is Suffering, Gaslighting, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Other, Pre-Canon, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 13:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tromperie/pseuds/Tromperie
Summary: Crawford is very lucky to be chosen by the Pretorius Institute. His mentor is a genius. Everything is a step toward future greatness. It has to be, because Crawford doesn't have anything else.





	Formative Experience

**Author's Note:**

> Another old fic imported for archiving. 
> 
> Because apparently nobody else was going to write the horrible "Crawford was definitely being groomed before that very timely decapitation" fic.

Every year students fell over themselves fighting tooth and nail for the chance to work with the Pretorius Institute. It was one of the most prestigious grants at Miskatonic. And yet it was mousy little Crawford who’d impressed his way into working with the founder himself.

“This is brilliant work.” Pretorius had held up a copy of Crawford’s neuro-engineering thesis on the effects of vibrational waves on audio-visual perception. He’d barely passed the board. “You’re exactly who I need for my current project.”

Crawford wasn’t someone people said they needed. Maybe that was why he stayed. That, and his empty bank account. Pretorius was quick to offer Crawford a room in the Institute, which was really just a house with a plaque on the front. He helped carry Crawford’s two meager suitcases into a small, nondescript bedroom on the second floor and then, without so much as a tour, they began.

The first few minutes of Pretorius’ lecture were hard to swallow: the existence of other dimensions, the apparent wonders attributed to a machine that was only a rough sketch. But slowly, it began to make sense. Pretorius told him about the ways in which it could expand the human conscience, not just in terms of access to knowledge but in actual physical brain growth. The ways in which this machine would put them all on the road to the next step in cognitive development. They’d be famous and live lifetimes, leaving an indelible mark on human history.

Crawford had never had many friends. Every second and cent he had was spent on getting his degrees, and that had soon driven away any interested social connections. It was almost second nature to devote the whole of his time to bringing the resonator to life, translating Pretorius’ rough sketches into workable schematics and then beginning to rough out a place in the attic where they could work.

“A man your age should spend more time with the fairer sex,” Pretorius told him. “You’ll regret wasting your best years.” And then he’d winked.

The fairer sex wasn’t where Crawford’s interests lay. Or rather, he’d been so unbothered by attraction for most of his life that he’d stopped thinking about it. There were only singular data points stretched out by years – a persistent warmth in his chest when the student librarian at his high school had greeted him every morning that grew the more accustomed he became to her smile; a thrill low in his gut when the handsome RA had invited him to a party he never attended – none of it a good basis for science.

“I don’t mind,” was all he said, brushing it off.

There were a lot of things he learned to brush off.

Pretorius insisted on familiarity between them early on. “Call me Edward,” he said over and over, most times refusing to answer unless Crawford did.

He was far friendlier than his imposing reputation at Miskatonic would’ve indicated. When they weren’t working he tried constantly to draw Crawford out, inviting him to dinner in their small kitchen or joining him for coffee in the mornings. It was nice to have something like a friend, even if it was his boss. Even if his sense of humor was…strange.

“Productive morning, I see,” he’d said once when he caught Crawford shuffling bleary-eyed to the bathroom, eyes on his protégé’s boxers. He’d left before the remark could sink in, leaving Crawford to blush and fluster to no one and tell himself he was overreacting.

“I envy you,” he said another time as they sat in the kitchen, Crawford poring over his coding notes. “With a face like yours, any of those fine young things on campus would be happy to spread their legs for a little fun. How would you feel about lending it to me?”

“I-“

“It’s a joke, Crawford. No need to look so scandalized.” And then Pretorius had patted his shoulder, fatherly. Pitying.

Of course Pretorius needed no help with women. It seemed as if he’d made space in his schedule to let Crawford acclimate, but soon after his usual social schedule resumed. He had a different woman for every weekend. Beautiful. Charming. Freshmen enamored of Pretorius’ roguish grin and academic largesse. Ladies of the evening, as drawn by the grant funding as anyone else. Crawford had cringed at his own pathetic shyness, the nervousness he felt when they smiled perfunctorily at him.

It was such a shock to hear them scream.

The first time he’d come beating on Pretorius’ door, certain there had been an accident. He’d been greeted with a scowl and told in no certain terms to make himself scarce. That was how he knew even before the next time (and the next, and the next) that this was routine.

“What happens to them?” it took all his courage to ask, when he realized there were no repeat visitors.

“They go back to their lives.”

Of course. He never went out – they could all be on campus and he wouldn’t notice. Or in shallow graves. “Why do you do it? Why do you torture them like this?”

“Crawford,” indulgence, and something darker, “they entrust me with taking them beyond their wildest dreams. If they didn’t like it, don’t you think they’d tell the police?”

Police never came to the institute. Crawford wasn’t sure they’d come even if he called.

“If you’re curious, you can always knock. I’d let you in.” Pretorius grinned at him, and his smile seemed to contain too many teeth.

Crawford started locking his door at night. 

The resonator was half finished before it came up again. Pretorius pulled him out of the attic (where it was safe, where he was doing something worthwhile and all the rest would be worth it) and asked to discuss something with him. He insisted on seeing Crawford in his room.

“You’re losing focus,” he said when Crawford confessed that the machine had hit a snag. “You’ve forgotten what our purpose is.”

There was nowhere safe to look: chains hung from the ceiling, strange leather and metal peeked out from a wardrobe, and on the wall – he blushed and looked at his feet. “I’m not sure I know what you’re after.”

“Experience,” Pretorius countered him. “What any true scientist seeks. I want the whole breadth of human sensation. And soon, we’ll be able to understand even beyond that.”

“I thought we were looking for other worlds…” Crawford’s voice was swallowed by the room. Neither he nor Pretorius were large men, but suddenly he felt fragile.

“And what are those other worlds but new means of seeing. New ways of understanding?” Pretorius grabbed his wrist, reeling him in. “You, for example. Your theoretical work on the brain was fascinating. But look how far you’ve come by building the resonator. _Experiencing_ it.” His grip tightened. “Learning through these hands.”

“I don’t understaaGHH!” In one quick movement Pretorius had pulled his thumb out of joint, and Crawford almost doubled over with pain. His mentor (mad, brilliant) looked down on him, nodding. And after a moment, popped the digit back into place with practiced ease.

“You see?” Pretorius prodded the swelling red flesh on Crawford’s palm. “Pain is only one more way to understand ourselves. You won’t be able to use that hand. But you’ll push yourself beyond it for the sake of the work.”

Crawford cradled his hand close to his chest, sucking in air through clenched teeth.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” Pretorius assured him. “This time’s my fault.”

This time.

The pulse of Crawford’s swollen, aching hand was nothing compared to the panicked beat of his heart, submerged under the awe of listening to Pretorius explain the workings of the machine long into the night. They opened a door, and more would come.

The wall of propriety had broken that night. Pretorius touched him all the time now, it seemed. Maybe it was only that he noticed it more – a hand on his shoulder at the table, a brush too close in the hall as they passed each other, all emphasized by the lingering pain in his thumb.

“We’re close now,” Pretorius whispered almost in his ear as they fit in wires and tubes that would be the resonators vital organs. “Can you feel it, Crawford?”

He was concentrating very hard, in that moment, on not feeling several things.

That night, no longer safe even behind the locked door of his private room, Crawford dreamed. He was working on the resonator – no, he was part of the resonator, its heavy wires and soldered metal gleaming and shot through his skin. Pretorius circled him, praising his effort, his usefulness, how close to ready perfection he was. He wrapped silvery cords around Crawford’s already immobile legs, and no matter how Crawford begged his voice didn’t seem to reach. When the sharp edges began digging under his skin, leaking into his veins, he was horrified to hear his screams weren’t entirely in pain.

He woke up drenched in sweat, convinced he could hear another of Pretorius’ women. But there was no one in the house but the two of them.

_If they didn’t like it, they would have said something._

He lived for the resonator now. He didn’t go out. He rarely ate, and slept even less. He bent over the computer until his back ached, running test after test to bring it to life. And one night it worked – sent him scurrying from his last unsafe haven to the door he’d been avoiding, unable to resist showing Pretorius. Unable to stop the swoop in his stomach when he was praised for his success.

They flipped the switch. And in a horrifying instant, he understood.


End file.
